When we played with the the Asus Trio recently, we couldn’t quite work out why we’d want to have both an Android and a Windows tablet in one. That’s nothing, though, because Asus wants to blow our minds open with a five-in-one product blending Android phone with Windows laptop. Confused yet?
It might seem like one of those crazy mind-bending concepts that could only be shown at a product expo, but the Asus Transformer Book V has plans for release, with Asus showcasing a product that takes your phone and gives you a reason to plug it into your laptop.
Do you remember the Asus Padfone? Australia only ever received the first generation, and it was basically a tablet with a slot at the back for the phone. You received both the tablet and the phone when you bought it, and when you wanted to use the tablet, you put your phone in the slot at the back of the tablet, and just like that, the tablet switched on, giving you a 10.1 inch window to your much smaller phone.
The Transformer Book V is essentially the new Padfone, taking the same style of phone docking port system, but applying it to a tablet that connects to a keyboard dock. But unlike the Padfone, the guts of the computer are running Windows 8, meaning it’s both a Windows 8 tablet and laptop.
The mobile phone side of things runs Android, though, and when you dock it in place, the laptop can also run Android straight from the phone, essentially turning it into an Android tablet and an Android laptop with the keyboard dock in play.
So there you have it: a Windows tablet, a Windows laptop, an Android tablet, an Android laptop, and an Android phone all in one.
Voila.
The system will take advantage of some pretty decent innards, with Intel inside both the phone and the tablet, though it’ll be an Atom in the phone and an upcoming Intel Core processor, likely from the upcoming Broadwell chips set to arrive officially in the next few months.
On the phone side of things, expect a 5 inch screen, 2GB RAM, up to 64GB storage, and an 8 megapixel rear camera accompanying the 2 megapixel on the front, with a 2550mAh battery keeping you alive. Android 4.4 “KitKat” will run natively here.
The computer side of things will be a little more substantial — it would have to be — with Windows 8.1, up to 128GB of storage with a 1TB drive a possibility, and a 12.5 inch IPS screen.
There’s no price as of yet, nor is there an availability, but we’ll be curious to see if this one makes landfall locally, as the last Padfone missed us, and this will only really be effective with that included as part of the package.
